Art

People with synaesthesia are more likely to participate in creative endeavors, according to research by Jamie Ward, Daisy Thompson-Lake, Roxanne Ely and Flora Kaminski. Their research paper Synaesthesia, creativity and art: What is the link? was published by the British Psychological Society in 2008. You can find that paper here. These authors conclude that, while synaesthetes may have better bottom-up access to certain associations, [they are] not necessarily better able to use them flexibly (in divergent thinking). The abstract for that paper is below. The image above is a photograph of “Meeting of the Keys” by synaesthete and artist April Zanne Johnson, a founding member of The IASAS.

Jamie Ward, Daisy Thompson-Lake, Roxanne Ely and Flora Kaminski

Department of Psychology, University College London, UK

It has been suggested that individuals with synaesthesia may show heightened creativity as a result of being able to form meaningful associations between disparate stimuli (e.g. colour, sound). In this study, a large sample ðN 1⁄4 82Þ of people with various kinds of synaesthesia were given two psychometric tests of creativity (Remote Associates Test, Alternate Uses Test) and were also asked about the amount of time engaged in creative arts (visual art, music). There was a significant tendency for synaesthetes to spend more time engaged in creative arts and this was, at least in part, dependent upon the type of synaesthesia experienced. For example, synaesthetes experiencing vision from music were far more likely to play an instrument than their other synaesthetic counterparts. There was no relationship between this tendency and the psychometric measures of creativity, but synaesthetes did outperform controls on one of the two psychometric measures (Remote Associates). We conclude that the tendency for synaesthetes to be more engaged in art is likely to have a different mechanism to psychometric measures of creativity, and that there is no direct link between them. Although synaesthetes may well perform better on some measures of creativity, we suggest that synaesthetes have better bottom-up access to certain associations, but are not necessarily better able to use them flexibly (in divergent thinking).